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Asahi Linux on M3

asahilinux.org

251–260 of 365 posts

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#251
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man… they absolutely do not care. An Apple engineer made the boot loader for Mac open in the first place.

Darwin is still sitting there all these years. It’s called market inertia.

What is the context here? I am saying, if they cared what OS users booted on their mac they would have used the same boot process the iPad has. They wouldn't have gone out of their way to make it possible to boot systems not signed by Apple.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#252
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they even care? 99% of people aren't going to be installing Linux on their Macbook. If Apple did care, they'd have stopped allowing dual booting a long time ago.

It works for now, but one day it won’t then what?

FUD based in no actual facts. Recently with the new Golden Gate OS update, Asahi boot was made inoperable. Apple basically helped the Asahi folks work around a flag in the boot loader that they had not figured out how to handle in their reverse engineering. This doesnt strike me as the actions of an organization that is planning to close down the ability for asahi to boot after years of allowing it.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#253
post #219
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. Chinese vendors like Rockchip and Allwinner provide fairly halfassed docs at times, but they try. It's housnads of pages, total, sure. But even this along with public code samples allows to create almost perfectly FOSS supported implementations for their HW. And it's a complex HW similar to what Apple has. I've worked with all kinds of just annoyingly incomplete and badly written datasheets, and if…

Darwin is open source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) https://www.puredarwin.org/

Darwin doesn't cover any usecase here.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#254
post #97

I'm not sure I understand the target user for Asahi. Is this someone that only wants to run Linux and wants to use their GPU on Linux? Seems like this is not the case, yet. Or, is this for someone that wants to dual boot and use Linux sometimes, and then reboot into MacOS when they want to use the GPU?

Honestly I wouldn't waste any of my time trying to run a worse OS than MacOS in a hardware that wasn't completely supported by the sw As much as I like Linux this kind of tinkering is only for people with more time and less expectations about the experience If I need Linux I can always go for UTM or something similar

Sounds like you haven't used Asahi. I found the kde remix to be pretty nice to use. Literally the only thing that I found frustrating was:

1) for the longest time, but no longer, Google did not ship an official chrome linux arm64 package. Chromium Browser also has not included google sync for years now. But now, google chrome does ship for arm64 linux so its all good.

2) usb-c video still doesn't work, so not ideal for a laptop without hdmi that you'd want to dock

Otherwise, it works really well.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#255
post #97

I'm not sure I understand the target user for Asahi. Is this someone that only wants to run Linux and wants to use their GPU on Linux? Seems like this is not the case, yet. Or, is this for someone that wants to dual boot and use Linux sometimes, and then reboot into MacOS when they want to use the GPU?

Target user is someone that wants to use Linux on good hardware. Apple hardware has some of the best perf-per-single-thread-perf-per-watt there is. Also, apple desktops are really compact and easy to keep out of the way while having really good performance too.

My current linux PC cuda machine is the latest Intel Ultra 9 mini PC from minisforum, and it still isnt quite as fast as a years old M1/M2. The only thing it has that the mac doesnt is cuda egpu support.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it makes much sense to expect such a cohesive/specific philosophy from an open source project like this. The goal is "Linux on Mac". In a commercial product, specific details of what gets built usually stem from a more detailed vision that can be articulated as one. In open source projects those details are determined by what individual contributors are motivated to work on. That doesn't means a cohesiv…

I don't think it matters that Asashi is a generation or three behind, because the moment you really need it is when Apple stops updating the OS for your hardware. When M1 drops out of support I bet Asashi for the M1 machines will be pretty polished.

Another thing is, the M1 and later hardware is still years later some of the best arm64 hardware youre going to find. Combine that with the really affordable prices you can find on the used market and Linux arm64 on this kind of great hardware at a low price is quite appealing.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably took me less time to search “Apple open source” and click the first link than it did to type your question: https://opensource.apple.com/

Basically nothing except swift and llvm.

I mean, if you can’t read I could see how one might walk away with that impression.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#258
post #244

It is odd that Apple doesn't chip in here... they've originated so much decent stuff in the OSS space. Seems like a huge missed opportunity.

Apple are hostile to everything CopyLeft. Why would they "chip in" here?

Well, they will get more people buying MacBooks, though they won't really use their services.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#259

Thanks for the effort, guys. This makes me think, shouldn't the driver layer be generic now. All the driver does is writing correct data at correct address when needed, there is no need for OS support except triggering driver when to do that. A true HAL, any OS can run on that HAL.

That data and that address changes, and the logic changes.

Re: Asahi Linux on M3

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple discontinues support for this HW, not Apple discontinues support for running Linux in a hypervisor.

when apple discontinues support for older hardware, it doesn't get OS software updates. that doesn't disable the hardware from running the latest OS before OS updates for the hardware were ended. On the frozen-in-time OS, you'd still have a working instance of apple silicon hypervisor wrapping optimized drivers that make whatever linux arm build you're running still see the hardware.

So you are wrapping Linux in an insecure and never updating wrapper connected to the internet?

Sounds awesome!

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